I had never had powdered olive oil before. In fact, I'd never even heard about it until this season of Top Chef, when chef Ty-lor Boring (best name ever) used it to top a cube of watermelon for a modernist cooking quickfire challenge. I so love this sort of magical transformation that molecular gastronomy makes possible. I imagined eating this dish: a sleek cube of watermelon capped with an unidentified, powdery substance that, upon tasting, you realize is something totally familiar and totally transformed. I researched this technique online, and learned that it was actually pretty simple -- all you need is tapioca maltodextrin and any liquid fat. Tapioca maltodextrin is pretty neat stuff- it's derived from tapioca, is near flavorless, and is incredibly lightweight. For these reasons, processed food companies have long used it as a way to add volume, but not weight, to frozen dinners and dry mixes! I call shenanigans.

Anyway, tapioca maltodextrin is also prized for its ability to stabilize liquid fats so they can be turned into powder, so I ordered it to use for Dustin's Science! (exclaimation point intended!) birthday dinner. I had plans to use it for two courses. First, I wanted to make powdered olive oil to top cubes of my favorite local mozzarella as part of a cheese plate. Second, I wanted to use it to make a powdered bacon fat that I could use to dust a sage-flecked miniature funnel cake- the goal being that it would look like the powdered sugar topping on a traditional funnel cake, but taste like bacon. I wasn't sure that the powdered bacon fat would work, because I couldn't find any mention of such a thing online, so I decided to test the tapioca maltodextrin-waters with a simple powdered olive oil trial run (photographed below) and then later a second trail with the bacon fat (in the video below). Read on to see how it all works, and watch a video of my trials, errors and triumphs below! Special thanks to my super talented videographer helenthehanny!

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A tiny bowl on a non-molecular gastronomy approved scale (all the recipes I read say that you should use a scale that can measure down to tenths of grams, but I got by just fine with my standard kitchen scale).

An errant sprinkling of the tapioca maltodextrin. It's a feathery, superfine powder, and impossible to use without spilling.

Measuring 16 grams of olive oil to mix with the 5 grams of tapioca maltodextrin. You want a ratio of about 1 part powder to 3 parts liquid fat.

Adding a pinch of kosher salt.

Oil meets powder! AKA, this bowl is too small.

The mixture should look a bit like a dry, lumpy biscuit dough.

The recipe suggests pushing the mixture through a tamis for a finer powder- I used a fine mesh sieve.

Pretty filaments of olive oil powder.

A final scrape.

Voilà! Powdered olive oil!

The verdict? Absolutely magical -- the stuff melts on your tongue as if you've taken a swig of oil from the bottle. It didn't look quite as powdery as I was expecting, probably because I didn't have a tamis, but the end product was excellent all the same. I used my every-day olive oil for this attempt, not wanting to waste the good stuff, and therefore the flavor wasn't all that it could be. After these trial runs, I decided that I would make a simple garlic-infused oil, and then powder-ize that to top cubes of local mozzarella for a cheese course, and serve the powdered bacon fat with funnel cakes for a 'carnival foods' course.

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I have always loved food. My favorite books as a kid always featured food (eg. The Berenstain Bears Get the Gimmies- so much candy!) and I loved cooking shows like Yan Can Cook and The Frugal Gourmet. I started cooking the Thanksgiving dinner for my family when I was 13 years old. I have food52 to thank for inspiring me to come up with my own recipes, as well as for introducing me to a community of fantastic cooks and their amazing recipes. I try my best to cook locally and seasonally, and I tend to prefer straightforward, simple recipes where the ingredients get to shine. I live in wonderful Austin, Texas with my husband, Andy (a video game programmer) and my son, Henry (an 8-month-old who loves to eat).

WoW! I had been considering pitching a party idea for later in the summer, but there's no way I could come close to this! Maybe once little Henry is older you should become a professional party planner.

hi sygyzy! they were helpful! the package of TM and the recipes I referenced (here's one: http://www.seriouseats...) all said the powder should be 31-34% the weight of the oil, but i completely agree with you- in all cases i ended up just mixing in more powder to make it look right, and i totally believe you that the powder should be even drier than i made it. any ideas about why the recipes specify this ratio?